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• Toledo Dangerous: Roadkill’s Freiburger and Finnegan Tempt Fate in a Hot Rod Jeep [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 6 May 2013

  

  One of the hottest shows on MotorTrend’s YouTube channel is Roadkill. Correction: One of the hottest automotive shows on all of YouTube is Roadkill. Every episode is an unscripted, low-budget buddy comedy/road movie, with Hot Rod editors David Freibuger and Mike Finnegan serving as the latter-day, mechanically-inclined Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. You don’t have to love American V8s – or even cars period – to enjoy their shenanigans.

  Case-in-point: This newest episode, which chronicles the guys’ most ambitious/harebrained quest yet. It involves driving a genuine World War II era military Jeep that a previous owner had turned into a Chevy-powered, airbag-suspended street rod from Hot Rod’s suburban L.A. H.Q. to a bar out in the desert near Parker, Arizona. Oh, and most of the Jeep’s vital systems – i.e. brakes, suspension, transmission, etc. – are suspect at best. How can that not lead to great television, er, internet?

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• Dinosaur Island: MotorTrend Checks out the Cuban Classic Car Scene [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 23 April 2013

  

  At the risk of earning ourselves a promotion to the rank of major buzzkill, no company on earth will ever produce cars like those made by U.S. automakers in the 1950s. Yes, that’s probably a good thing, given all the exponential advancements that have been made to automobiles in the areas of safety, efficiency, cleanliness and performance since then, but there was a whole lot right with American cars of that decade, too. The splashy, aerospace-inspired styling, liberal use of chrome and stainless steel trim and vivid colors inside and out all conspired to make the cars made by our country easily recognizable, a sharp contrast to today’s timid, beige (in both the figurative and literal senses) domestic transportation appliances. It’s a shame, nay, a travesty that the only place left in this country to see befinned Ike Era rides is parked at car shows with a car hop tray (replete with plastic burger, fries and milkshake) on the driver’s door window sill and a toddler-shaped mannequin perched face-first against the front bumper.

  However, there is a place where seeing such cars out in the wild is a routine occurrence: Cuba! Yes, it’s a royal pain in the poo-chute for us gringos to go there (legally, anyway), but MotorTrend editors Arthur St. Antoine and Carlos Lago managed to use their car scribe charms to get the okay from D.C. And what they found when they got there is wall-to-wall awesome: Loads of old steel from the likes of Pontiac, Chevrolet and Ford being kept on the road by their clever and resourceful owners, fantastic architecture in varying states of preservation (or decay), and enough adult beverages and freshly-rolled Cuban stogies to constitute what Charlie Sheen calls “breakfast.” Could someone please remind us why our government hasn’t reconsidered its unfriending of this communist country while, at the same time, it’s doing the diplomatic and economic equivalents of sharing food pictures and cat videos with another?

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• The Top 25 Homologation Specials of All Time

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 18 April 2013

  

  Purpose-built racing cars – be they single seat open wheelers, sports prototypes, dragsters or any other automobile whose sole reason for being is to compete – have always inspired awe and been capable of extraordinary performance. But when it comes to truly connecting with the fans in the stands, these thoroughbreds are no match for production-based (even if it’s just the shape of the body) machinery. The idea of watching a particular car win a race and then walking out to the parking lot and driving home in or driving to the local dealer to check out an identical (save for some safety and performance equipment and a whole heap-o-decals) car holds widespread (if not universal) appeal.

  Of course, to stand a better chance at winning on Sunday so they can sell on Monday, manufacturers load their showroom-bred competition models with go-fast bits. However, many sanctioning bodies used to require (though, sadly, very few still do) that those same upgrades to be fitted to a certain number of the street-legal models Joe Bloe can buy, meaning the factories have to sell what are known as homologation specials in order to race that model. The annals of automotive history are brimming with such four-wheeled entry forms, yet we’ve managed to pare that manifest down to the 25 fastest, coolest and most outrageous ones ever to wear a license plate.

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• The Top 10 Debuts of the 2013 New York Auto Show

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 28 March 2013

  

  For a town where most of the residents share cars, and those cars have their own dedicated tunnels with their own power supplies for their electric propulsion systems, New York’s annual international auto show sure has become one of the hottest expos on the calendar. For the 2013 New York Auto Show now underway, there’s a stellar cast of world debuts from both home and abroad on display. But which of those debuts are the ones that will be hard to fuggetabout? Our 10 picks to attain that status can be found – Where else? – after the jump.

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• 2014 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 is a Track Day Titan

  In Auto News / By Tom Anderson / 27 March 2013

  

  A couple years ago, when Chevrolet was fixing to introduce a supercharged, super-capable version of the hit fifth generation Camaro, many motoring pundits figured it would be called the Z28. After all, the “regular” V8 Camaro had already bogarted the SS moniker. But when the sheet finally came off, it turned out it was called the ZL1 (after the aluminum 427 cubic-inch V8 installed in a handful of extra-special order 1969 COPO Camaros). Sometime later, there was word a hardcore track package was in development. Would this be the Z28 revival? Negative, Ghostrider; it’s called the 1LE, an option group available for the manual-trans SS coupe and named for a conceptually similar package offered on late third-gen Z28 and IROC-Z coupes.

  So when word filtered out that Chevrolet would be rolling out the facelifted 2014 Camaro at the New York Auto Show this week, no one expected those three hallowed characters to make an appearance. But maybe that was Chevrolet’s plan all along, for at the end of the brand’s press conference this morning, it rolled out the 2014 Camaro Z/28 (note the old school slash in the name) to a cacophony of gasps, cheers and applause. And like the Z/28s of old, the new Z/28 is designed for attacking a road course with maximum fury.

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• NASCAR 2013: Kyle Busch Dominates the Weekend at Fontana

  In Motorsports / By Andre Ravinowich / 25 March 2013

  

  This past weekend, Sub5Zero traveled to Fontana to cover something a bit different than what we are used to. And we can’t say that we walked away disappointed. More than 80,000 fans descended upon Auto Club Speedway to cheer their favorite drivers in both the Nationwide Series’ Royal Purple 300, as well as the 5th major race of the Sprint Cup season – the Auto Club 400.

  And as you can guess from the title of the article, Kyle Busch won not one, but both races this weekend. Click past the break to read more about this weekend’s races, and also a bit about Sub5Zero’s first experience at covering a NASCAR race.

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• Smile, You’re on Candid Camaro: Jeff Gordon and Pepsi Troll a Car Salesman [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 13 March 2013

  

  While it’s impossible for one to verify 100% the authenticity of a hidden camera prank (unless you’re on the receiving end of one, that is), there’s no denying that many of the situations into which subjects are put (and their reactions to them) are hilarious. It’s even more funny when celebrities are the ones pulling the prank. In those instances, the prankee doesn’t know what to be more flummoxed by: The fact that he’s been had, or the fact that he’s been had by a well-known figure.

  Four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon certainly qualifies as a well-known figure, even outside motorsports circles (Seems like only yesterday he was dominating our Thursday evening TV viewing, administering beatdowns to his USAC Sprint and Midget car rivals while winning fans’ hearts with his gawky kid demeanor and mustachioed, bemulleted grooming. Yes, we are indeed that old.). So when the future NASCAR hall of famer and longtime sponsor Pepsi decided to have some fun at the expense of a used car salesman and an ’09 Chevrolet Camaro, you just knew the payoff was going to be good. And it is, all-but-certainly-staged-ness be damned.

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• 2013 Geneva Motor Show: The Top 20 Debuts

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 5 March 2013

  

  More than a few people think supercars are an endangered species. All the concerns about flaunting wealth inequality and using lots of gas are just some of the forces conspiring to make these most athletic of automobiles less and less desirable for both builders and buyers. So we can look forward to a future with fewer tarmac-melting monsters and more plug-in kumbaya cracker boxes, right?

  Not so fast, kemosabe. If the lineup of world debuts at this year’s Geneva Motor Show is any indication, we may be entering a new golden age of 200+ mph hypercars. The difference this time around is many of them are a bit more responsible, with overdrive (and occasionally double overdrive) 7-speed transmissions and hybrid assist. Of course, these aren’t the only automotive stars in the lakeside Swiss municipality. Here are the 20 premieres that really stir our hot chocolate.

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• Roadkill Pits the Last Body-on-Frame Cop Cars against Each Other, Hijinks Ensue [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 20 February 2013

  

  We strongly feel that one of the very best car shows on YouTube (maybe the best car show on YouTube) is Roadkill. In each episode, Hot Rod magazine editor-in-chief David Freiburger and staff editor Mike Finnegan cook up a harebrained challenge for themselves involving big American V8s, lots of driving, lots of wrenching (both planned and unplanned), and lots of laughter. Or to use a food analogy, if the U.S. version of Top Gear is a store-bought frozen burrito, Roadkill is a restaurant-prepared, tortilla-wrapped Roman orgy of meat, cheese, veggies and spices that’s bigger than some breeds of dog and comes with rice and beans on the side. Mmmm…

  What? Oh, this episode of Roadkill! It’s the current one (as of this writing), and it features a battle of the last V8-powered, body-on-frame, rear-drive police cruisers from GM and Ford, the Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 and the Ford Crown Victoria P71. What’s more, the first part of the vid takes place in Arcadia, California, right over the border (if you ignore everything west of Fifth Avenue and east of Santa Anita Park, anyway) from our old stomping grounds in Monrovia (M-TOWN REPRESENT!). *ahem* So, yeah, watch the video and check out the previous episodes. Trust us when we say it’s time well spent.

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• 2014 Chevrolet SS is a Handsome High-Po Sedan…with One Glaring Omission

  In Auto News / By Tom Anderson / 17 February 2013

  

  We were huge fans of the Pontiac G8 during its tragically-short life. And we were especially fond of the G8 GXP, with its 415hp LS3 V8 and choice of a 6-speed automatic or 6-speed manual transmission. In fact, if we had our druthers (and by “our druthers” we mean the money and garage space) we’d have both a G8 GXP and the Holden-supplied Poncho that came before it, the last generation GTO.

  Chevrolet, however, wants to lure us away from its late sister brand with its own Australian immigrant, the 2014 Chevrolet SS. It’s the nameplate’s new representative in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and its new four-door performance leader. In fact, the folks at Chevrolet have, more than once, proclaimed it to be a “four-door Corvette.” So…is it?

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